Cdl. Mahony Points the Finger

Now that the spectre of testifying at a trial is removed from Cdl. Mahony's horizon, he's free to cast blame and point fingers.

Weinkopf: What about the charge that the problem is a lack of discipline and orthodoxy in the seminaries?

Mahony: Well, first of all that's one of the things that we still are studying. As you know, the bishops are conducting a study of causes.... In our case, many of the priests came out of the "good old days" -- Latin-only, cassocks-only.... Most of our cases did not come out of post-Vatican II, they came out of pre-Vatican II.

(Weinkopf is the editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Daily News.)

The word "homosexual" does NOT appear in the linked interview.

The Cardinal's timeline is likely correct. However, he's careful not to deal with the real problem.

That's his history, and he's sticking to it.

But it's not just Cdl. Mahony's story. Here we find a similar "thought:"

We learn from The Reverend Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (I'm not making it up, that's her name) of the United Church of Christ (one of the one zillion, one hundred and thirty million, four hundred and twenty five and one half point two six Protestant denominations...give or take):

To me, the symbol of the Latin Mass being reintroduced in this time when the struggle to stop child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is still going on is very instructive. The Latin Mass was a product of a reactionary time in the Catholic Church where it rejected many very necessary reforms and consolidated its power in the hierarchy. Today the re-introduction of the Latin Mass signals to me that far from becoming open to the kinds of changes needed to protect children from abuse, the Catholic Church is once again circling the wagons, rejecting necessary reforms and consolidating its power in the hierarchy.

HT: CWN, and the Lady in the Pew